Archfiend

Chapter 381: The Gold-Banded Staff (6)

In the wake of these words, boundless cold ice spread from under Xu Yangyi’s feet! The temperature suddenly plummeted!

He wasn’t able to use this move. The mere requirement of two erosions would drain his body of all spiritual force. If he wanted to use this nameless erosion post-fusion, he needed to borrow external spiritual force.

Swoosh… In the air, a great blizzard, a flurry of snow like goose feathers, descended. The second erosion… the drifting snow of June!

However, the cold ice underneath him constructed a stargazer altar! Outside, azure nether ghostflame curled upon it. At the same time, a hundred-meter-sized ice sculpture of a nine-headed pheasant was on the altar. It was the spitting image of the true entity!

All of this transpired in less than three seconds!

In concert with these events, the skeletal monkey plucked a hair from its body and softly blew on it.

Swish swish swish… One split into two, two split into three, and three split into infinity! In a flash, layer after layer, hundreds of skeletal monkeys emerged and confronted the hundred-meter-sized stargazer altar!

“Damn…” Xu Yangyi’s eyes raged with fiery anger. “Truly a monster…”

The monkey was actually continuing to get stronger!

Afterwards, his hand softly tapped downwards. “Heavenly Opening… One Erosion!”

Chink! This time, there was no speck of light or any omen.

It only seemed… that a giant, invisible hand suddenly pressed down towards the monkey! Even space rang out with cracking sounds that spoke of an unendurable weight!

Yet at the same time, the hundreds of monkeys all lifted up the silver staff in their hands and slammed down at Xu Yangyi!

Swoosh! In the air, the shadows of hundreds of silver staffs covered the sky and blotted out the sun! Staffs danced like silver snakes, stirring a thousand snow mounds!

Crack! The entire landscape seemed to pause. In the next second, an extremely powerful attractive force spread from where both sides linked together!

There was no explosion or qi fluctuation, but rather… a fingertip-sized vortex took shape between the monkey and man.

The vortex shuddered, as if it was sucking in, spitting out, and stabilizing. But… hidden within it was a terrible spiritual force that shocked Xu Yangyi’s heart and caused his skin to crawl!

“That’s…” His heart skipped a beat. “A Nirvana Void!!!” [1]

“Both our moves are completely matched! Back then, mine and senior brother’s attack was only dispelled when Daomaster Ancientpine took care of it himself. And back then… I was still at Qi Condensation. Now… I’m already Foundation Establishment, and so is the enemy… This Nirvana Void…”

Without any further thought, he turned tail and ran away!

This was a living bomb… 

And there was no Dao Master here!

This was the Nirvana Void of two Foundation Establishment cultivators!

The skeletal monkey also looked to be dazed. Its meager spiritual sense was telling it that this thing was dangerous… very dangerous… Moreover, the vortex could bring it fatal danger at any moment.

It shook its head and drew closer in confusion to study the Nirvana Void. It appeared it couldn’t understand how this bean-sized vortex could give it such a feeling.

“You got a death wish.” Xu Yangyi icily brushed an eye over the monkey, and activated Clutching Wind, Seizing Shadow again. In the air, he drew forth numerous afterimages, and his wings unfolded. With his fasted speed, he rushed as far away as he could!

Big bro… Zhao Ziqi was ahead. He had discovered movement earlier, yet didn’t risk going. He could only wait for Xu Yangyi on the path the demon slayer had left on. Before he even finished speaking, however, he sensed an undefiable spiritual force wrap around him. He then heard Xu Yangyi’s voice. 

“Hide in my spiritual sense right now.”

Prompt, Zhao Ziqi acted accordingly.

Ten seconds seemed fast, yet seemed slow.

Ten seconds later, a rocketing blast suddenly roared behind Xu Yangyi!

BOOOOM!!!

A radiant blast of light detonated! A frightening qi shock wave overturned the seabed graveyard that no outsiders had perhaps ever entered!

A crimson glare erupted behind Xu Yangyi. The wreckages of ships and airplanes were like scraps of paper in a storm. In an instant, they flew into the air and summarily turned into ashes. Even all the spiritual light on the Cosmos Sun’s Hull flashed, soon engulfed in the raging shock wave!

The blast wave seemed to be mingled with a faintly audible scream.

Xu Yangyi didn’t look back, not that he could anyway!

At the same time the violent explosion boomed, he could only throw himself onto the floor. Afterwards, all he felt was a typhoon blow over his head! Such turbulent winds had to rank in the hundreds in terms of level and scale! Even space appeared to be torn apart!

“This is a Nirvana Void?!” He gritted his teeth and shut his eyes. Chills pulsed through his heart. “Back then, me and senior brother really were lucky…”

Boom… Boom boom boom! The violent explosion lasted for a full twenty-odd seconds. Like a meteor shower, the graveyard’s wreckages were brought into the air and then dashed into the ground by the shock wave. It was like a rain of arrows stabbing into the ground, their tail ends still faintly shaking. Xu Yangyi’s protective qi cover was out in full force, so he could avoid being turned into a sieve.

After twenty seconds, the shock wave finally settled down. His perspiration drenched his clothing. He was cautious, not daring to stand.

Space seemed to quiet down. The skeletal monkey’s dreadful screeching vanished without a trace. In the air, the smell of burnt seabed from the explosion filled the surroundings, as if an old battlefield was entered. Shattered steel plates, fractured remains, and broken aircraft wings inundated the landscape.

Ziqi, are you alright? Xu Yangyi asked in his spiritual sense.

I’m fine… big bro… w-what was that? That was horrible… Was it a magik artifact?

“Something even worse than a magik artifact.” Xu Yangyi heaved out a sigh. Just as he was about to get off his hands and feet… the corner of his eye suddenly twitched.

That wasn’t right… 

On the ground, there was a layer of white.

It was like smoke, like fog, like clouds, like mist.

This white… was rather familiar to him.

This was extremely concentrated qi!

Without hesitation, he opened all his pores and forcefully sucked in. In a twinkling… qi that nearly caused him to moan in comfort poured into his body. Although the Eternal Alchemy Canon couldn’t activate without a fire seed, and he couldn’t store this qi, the feeling of qi “passing through” still caused him, who hadn’t been so full of said vital energy in so long, to feel incredibly refreshed.

“This is even stronger than the high-level Spirit Focusing Formation I use!”

But how was this possible?

How could such a place exist in the Clearcloud Realm? Such a level of qi?

He didn’t get up straightaway, instead remaining on the ground. If there was an enemy, they wouldn’t be able to figure out whether he was dead or alive. Regardless, one of his hands clutched onto the supreme-grade spirit stone and the other was already poised to cast the Ten Cardinals Purgatory. His spiritual sense quickly spread out!

And yet, this check on his surroundings left him even more reluctant to act blindly!

Nothing was visible!

Before he entered the Final 10,000 Miles, he had always found himself in the monochrome world hidden behind the Clearcloud Realm and Sky Burial Festival. Now, however… he wasn’t there. Behind him, nothing was seen! 

It was a thick fog!

Furthermore, his consciousness was warning him… frantically warning him to leave this place! Leave this place at once! To not look back! 

There was something in this thick fog… a very terrible something!

Silent, he retrieved his spiritual sense. Little by little, he followed and explored the qi that saturated the entire triangle-shaped seabed. He didn’t discover one trace of life, but he saw the skeletal monkey that had been blown up to kingdom come.

He murmured for a few seconds, and his finger imperceptibly flicked out. A nebulous ray of qi shot out, and a standing ship board collapsed with a boom.

Calmly waiting another ten minutes, Xu Yangyi finally stood up and looked back, but this glance caused his gaze to shrink back. Behind him, from top to bottom, the triangle-shaped ocean hole was already teeming with extremely dense qi! The seabed was several thousand meters in size and tens of thousands of meters tall. The body of qi itself held substance, and this qi… weighed no less than a couple dozen tons!

“No way.” After dazedly looking at this sight for a couple seconds, he finally laughed in bitterness.

This was a golden opportunity bestowed by the heavens, yet he couldn’t absorb it!

He had no fire seed for the Eternal Alchemy Canon. Once this qi was absorbed, it would immediately turn into waste just like water, like entering a treasure mountain but only to come out empty-handed. Such a feeling left him in a rather foul mood.

Steeling his mind, he summoned all his willpower to force himself not to think about these dejecting matters. He solemnly observed the towering white fog before him. 

Big bro… Zhao Ziqi’s voice rang out in his mind. Are we… going to go?

Xu Yangyi was quiet for two seconds. His voice chopping nail and slicing iron, he said resolutely, “We must go.”

“This place opens once every ten years, and we don’t know the way leading to Earth. We can’t let go of any chance.”

His voice yet to fall, all the white fog suddenly whirled and fiercely approached the center of the seabed! It was like a giant black hole was there!

Less than five minutes later, dozens of tons of dense qi was all sucked in. Still… the object in the white mist left Xu Yangyi and Zhao Ziqi in disbelief!

They… actually weren’t on the seafloor! And this moreover wasn’t a tomb!

On the contrary… it was a great round plaza!

This plaza was formed from strips of stone, and the surface was fully covered in algae. The stone was carved with countless complex characters. These characters weren’t ancient script, but rather hieroglyphs! [2]

They were standing on the plaza’s edge. Another step forward would lead them to the fathomless abyss!

A half-meter away from where they were, the plaza began to fracture. Only several dozen meters away was there a stone platform that looked to be an isolated island on the seabed. Ancient and desolate, moss covered every inch of it. It was approximately a hundred meters in radius.

Rumble… Cool and collected, Xu Yangyi flicked out a finger, and a massive airplane wreck slid down with rolling dust. Down below was a misty black fog, the bottom unseen.

He carefully looked down. Ten seconds… twenty seconds… even thirty seconds later there was still no sound. As he was getting ready to look away, eight blood-red dots of light suddenly shone!

Not waiting for him to react, an enormous maw, along with a great downpour of saliva, fiercely chomped upwards from below! With one bite, the airplane wreck was swallowed into the mouth!

Crack! The crunch of a steel plate being torn through rang out.

In this instant of sparking flint, Xu Yangyi saw somewhat of a rough outline.

That wasn’t one mouth… it was hundreds of mouths! All coming from one giant head! And on that head… there were only mouths! And a few scarlet-red tongues!

The thing leaped up and fell down with a rumble. Numerous black clouds splashed up, like a giant whale flung its tail in the sea!

“What the fuck is that thing!” He glared daggers below. There was no sound of falling earth or water. This behemoth was at least 300 meters in size! The standard demon form of a late-stage Foundation Establishment demonbeast! Nonetheless, it seemed to be growing from the void!

He took a deep breath and looked across from him.

Facing him was a hanging cliff.

Their present situation was like being in a stadium. In such a case, the several-ten-meter-sized stone platform in the middle was the stadium’s heart. And in between their “audience seats” and the “audience seats” ahead, a several-hundred-meter-long crack appeared. Thus, they could only look up across right now.

In the center, on the isle-like stone platform, there was an object.

It was a staff.

A staff… that was no less than ten thousand meters long! Yet it was as thin as a child’s arm!

Jade but not jade, iron but not iron. It didn’t possess one glint of light. On the contrary it was like a stone sculpture, peacefully inserted in the middle of the stone platform.